First Concert

I just realized that it's been almost a week since my last post! Yikes. Where to start? I am feeling much better; the cold progressed quickly, with each "stage" lasting about a day. It was a cold after all, and not allergies; but now we're all starting to react to the mold and mothballs in the theater! You know how singers are; if it's not one thing, it's another! But we cope...

Sunday's concert went fine. The songs were by Luigi Dallapiccola, one of the champions of 12-tone / serial music. As a singer, if you don't have perfect pitch (which I don't), learning music like this can be extremely hard. It is essentially like learning a whole new musical language, and I had a month to do it! Three out of four of the songs went great. But the first one was gave me the most trouble, both in rehearsal and in performance. Fortunately, as these songs are not staples of the vocal repertoire, no one in the audience (except my coach) could tell when I completely flubbed the first two lines!! I was so flustered that I had to fight the impulse to stop and start over. But, my accompanist was right there with me and we made it through together. We finished strong, and people only had good things to say afterwards. I am grateful, though, that I am planning to sing these again on my March recital in Seattle; I'll get a second chance...